Officials of Sylhet Gas Fields (SGF) have commenced drilling at the ninth well of Haripur Gas Field to unearth natural gas, mineral gas or crude oil.
The inauguration program took place at around 7am on Thursday.
The ninth well of the natural gas field-- which is under the supervision of Petrobangla-- is being drilled by Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration & Production Company Limited (BAPEX) and can produce 188 barrels or 7 million cubic feet of natural gas.
“BAPEX officials are digging the well and we can talk about its capacity after a thorough inspection before November 15,” said Ali Iqbal Md Nurullah, managing director of SGF while inaugurating the drilling event.
Mohammad Ali, managing director of BAPEX, Harunur Rashid, managing director of Jalalabad Gas Transmission and Distribution Systems Limited and others were present at the event.
Haripur Gas Field is also known as Sylhet Gas Fields Ltd. It is a sister concern of Petrobangla under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Natural Resources. It initially started production of natural gas and mineral gas in the country.
In quest of natural gas, the then Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) in 1955 commenced drilling activities at Haripur, a small village under Jaintapur police station in Sylhet district of former East Pakistan.
Before the emergence of Bangladesh, six wells were drilled in Haripur.
After the War of Liberation, the Sylhet-7 well, a much-discussed well in the history of Bangladesh, was drilled at Haripur in 1986.
However, with time a gradual declining trend in production became apparent. After seven years of more or less uninterrupted production of a total of 5,60,869 barrels of crude oil, the well ceased production on 14 July 1994. The wellhead pressure was zero at the time.
In March 2005 workover was done on the well and was completed as a gas producer, with an initial production capacity of 15 MMCFD.
The last well, which was drilled in Haripur gas field by Scimitar Exploration Ltd. in 1989, was Surma 1A well. This well was an appraisal well for oil discovery but oil was not found. Now this well is producing gas. Recently a 3D seismic survey was completed at Sylhet-7 well.
1X30 MMscfd Silicagel type solid desiccant dehydration plant and 68 bbl/day capacity condensate fractionation plants have been set up in the field to process the gas and condensate produced from the wells.